In the ideal world, the French president was wrong and childish to have told the world he “instructs” the Cameroon president, and the young agitators who stormed the French Embassy in Yaounde to protest French arrogance were right. But they were wrong, naïve, manipulated and stupid and Emmanuel Macron was not inventing anything new; it was just business as usual.
Francophone African leaders have themselves to blame, Biya on top of the list. He basks in the “glory” of that shameful pride. In the early 1990s he boasted he was the “best pupil” of the late former president Francois Mitterrand. They take orders from Paris more seriously than rebellious Israelites took even the Ten Commandments. They submit to the authority of even French ministers. Biya cancelled an economically and politically strategic summit in Moscow last year to embrace the visiting French foreign affairs minister.
The French political class knows African leaders are subservient to them and this has been so over the decades. They have to be saints to not lord it over African leaders. As they are not, they do. Thus cowed, African leaders have beaten the hateful maxim “If you make yourself a banana, monkeys will eat you.” Now it is as bad as this: they have made themselves monkeys, more monkeys than racist (red neck) Caucasians would call them “black monkeys”. They are such dehumanised monkeys that even bananas can eat them like carnivorous plants (Venus Fly Trap that catches and eats flies or Giant Montane Pitch plant that eats rats or even sheep).
Macron may not be a banana. He certainly is not, if not figuratively. Biya may not be a monkey. He is not, if not figuratively. He is a handsome, elegant old man. In the ideal world, a boy like Macron should come to Biya with a notebook and take notes, the way Ali Bongo flies to Yaounde to receive lessons on how to rig and maintain himself in power and muscle the opposition. But we are not in the ideal world where all nations are equal and leaders are great by their merit, not by where they come from nor the race they happen to be born to.
We are in the real world where nations are greater or smaller thanks to their military and economic might and their status as former colonial or current neo-colonial masters, where a Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe with sound education, intelligence and rare eloquence and mastery of the English language in ways that dwarfed native English speakers, must submit to a midget John Major of Britain. But Mugabe refused to make himself a banana. Monkeys did not eat him. Nor was he a monkey to be eaten by such bananas. If Biya has made himself a monkey that bananas eat, whose fault is it?
Biya and Macron, thanks for concordant truth
The other weekend was a rare moment of truth, often elusive in international relations. Diplomatic politeness and state secrecy often leave the public never knowing what truly transpires within and between states. Macron followed in Biya’s tracks to tell us barefaced truth about their relations. They both spoke the truth. I believe both of them and I’m so thankful for the rare truth.
Relations between countries and heads of state are always reported good. Even stormy encounters between leaders or their emissaries are described as “discussions over good bilateral relations”. Well, until latter day outbursts get a few alert minds recalling signs poorly veiled by diplomatic courtesies. Or WikiLeaks revelations lay them all bare.
This time, Julian Asange did not have to help. Macron and Biya have been so generous to show and tell. After boasting in the 1990s that he was the best pupil of Francois Mitterrand, Biya told the world in Lyon, France less than a week after he ordered the release of MRC leader Maurice Kamto that he had “reported” to President Macron how things went.
It is true his exact words only mentioned the Major National Dialogue over the Anglophone problem at the end of which he got Kamto released, but connoisseurs of the system affirm his main report was about the release of Kamto, which local gossip already hinted were according to “instructions” from Macron.
The “revelation” by Macron the other weekend when he was heckled by a Cameroonian activist Calibrio Calibro four months after Biya’s old pupil-young master revelation, was actually no revelation; it was only a confirmation from the horse’s own mouth. Macron simply confirmed what Biya told us already. You report to someone who instructed you to do something. Biya reported to Macron that he had obediently executed Macron’s instruction to release Kamto. They both spoke the truth.
NoSo Re-run: 2nd chance for bloodshed
As “nyanga di sleep, trouble di come wake am”, that’s how these people are daring to go back and wake up sleeping dogs that just finished licking their lips from their February 9 bites.
As if they have not had enough; as if they did not heave a sigh of relief after Ambazonia combatants gave them a no-show election on February 9, they want a second chance for confrontation. All this just so their SDF friends can return to the National Assembly.
You know they (CPDM) really mean to have their friends around them so they are not lonely in the Assembly. They also regret what they just did – exactly what the Ambazonia movement looked up to – for SDF members to be out of the Yaounde Assembly to give a semblance of the 1954 walk out of Southern Cameroon politicians from Nigeria’s political structures to begin the first Restoration.